IN AN underground base in Wyoming, USA, there lies one of 450 Minuteman-3 missiles, tucked away and ready to launch upon the President’s command.

The missile lies on an unassuming fenced off property, beside a neighbouring ranch where cattle graze among of hay. Yet it has the potential to cause 20 times the amount of catastrophic damage of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima.

The United State’s edition of 60 Minutes got a rare look inside this base and discovered that floppy disks are still used to operate missiles such as this. Big, old floppy disks too, not the smaller 3.5-inch kind that you’re probably thinking about, but big 8-inch disks.

The silo’s 23-year-old deputy missileer (yes, that’s a real job) said that she had never even seen a floppy disk before looking after this silo that could obliterate the planet.

One of the computers that would receive a nuclear missile launch order from the President still uses big floppy disks pic.twitter.com/6SOZ8AExUp

This all probably seems quite concerning knowing that the world’s deadliest weaponry is being safeguarded by ancient technology, but operating them is an extremely costly business. It’s estimated that to operate the arsenal and modernise the systems it would cost $350 billion over a decade.

The more concerning part, however, is that the “irreplaceable” configuration and maintenance guides are on old formats and are degrading to the point where data is becoming unrecoverable. According to the US Department of Energy, this all means that the safety and reliability surrounding America’s weapons could soon be an issue.

But hey, who specialises in hacking 50-year-old technology? Surely, that’s a positive, right?